ASUS ARES II review

We test and review the ASUS ARES II as single card and in Crossfire today. The ARES 2 is a dual-GPU Radeon HD 7970 graphics card. Fully customized with 3rd party Liquid cooling. We test the product one one and three monitors in Eyefinity with the hottest games like Battlefield 3, Sleeping Dogs, Far Cry 3, Medal of Honor Warfighter, Hitman Absolution and many more. This product is based on two Tahiti XT2 GPUs, meaning that it’s clocked higher than one GHz with the ability to Boost the core clock frequency. ASUS unleashed a beast !

@BLEH!: You do get similar (somewhat less) power consumption from two separate 7970s. Power design here is beefed up, ala 7970 Lightning.

You could see that in many cases, ARESII ~ 2x single 7970 performance. And since 690 ~2x 670/680, this goes once again to prove that CF 7970s > SLI 680s, even at 1080p, and especially @1600p.

warezme
Member Guru

Posts: 85

Posted on: 01/28/2013 08:04 PM
Some cool stuff but if I were a serious buyer, my first question would be, how do you fit the cooling system of these two cards into a case? Aside from what is likely a short lived bragging period, I would be inclined to wait for the 8000 series.

@BLEH!: You do get similar (somewhat less) power consumption from two separate 7970s. Power design here is beefed up, ala 7970 Lightning.

You could see that in many cases, ARESII ~ 2x single 7970 performance. And since 690 ~2x 670/680, this goes once again to prove that CF 7970s > SLI 680s, even at 1080p, and especially @1600p.

I'm not sure how much power I draw TBH, I'm at stock volts for 1050 MHz (early reference cards), but I'm tempted to overvolt soon, see how far I can get. ASIC quality on my cards is mid 80s, whatever that equates to. CPU probably drinks as much as one 7970 does at the kinda clocks I run, I'm guessing about 800W for the whole system.

Some cool stuff but if I were a serious buyer, my first question would be, how do you fit the cooling system of these two cards into a case? Aside from what is likely a short lived bragging period, I would be inclined to wait for the 8000 series.

You'd need a case with 120 mm side fan mounts I guess, multiple ones, and be careful when taking the side off, either that or a custom case, which these things warrant.

yasamoka
Ancient Guru

Posts: 3697

Posted on: 01/28/2013 08:28 PMI'm not sure how much power I draw TBH, I'm at stock volts for 1050 MHz (early reference cards), but I'm tempted to overvolt soon, see how far I can get. ASIC quality on my cards is mid 80s, whatever that equates to. CPU probably drinks as much as one 7970 does at the kinda clocks I run, I'm guessing about 800W for the whole system.
Mid 80s means you'd hit your OC limits even on air cooling, but you'd get higher clocks for lower voltages. You would find that your card would probably hit a wall long before you reach high voltages like 1.25-1.3V. I'd guess 1.2V is the max voltage that will get you a reasonable clockspeed bump until you hit that wall.

As an example, my friend has a 7950 @90% ASIC. He reached 994MHz stable @stock volts (0.993V). I borrowed it and was able to reach 1000MHz@1000mV, 1050MHz@1050mV, then finally 1100MHz@1100mV. Not even 1200mV could get the card stable at 1125MHz. So this is what I mean by a wall.

Ryu5uzaku
Ancient Guru

Posts: 4709

Posted on: 01/28/2013 08:40 PM
What a beast totally the king of the hill this card haha

Posted on: 01/28/2013 08:51 PM
In some cases it really pulls ahead in the Multi GPU games, and in others it runs not too far away from a single 7970GHZ, interesting...

Reddoguk
Maha Guru

Posts: 800

Posted on: 01/28/2013 09:03 PM
As always a nice unbiased review of an amazing product(even an Nvidia fanboy is drooling).

Now where did i put that lotto ticket............

Taint3dBulge
Maha Guru

Posts: 1093

Posted on: 01/28/2013 09:16 PM
Great review, but I have to say some of the results of somewhat skewed, with the CPU bottlenecks and all.. I guess just a question is to when the 965 is going to get retired.. Like i should talk since i have a cpu just as old. So I just thought i would put it out there. Kinda wonder how that thing would run with a 3770k oced to 5gzh Since the people that would buy these things would be running something like that.

non the less thanks for your hard work and all you do man.

Hilbert Hagedoorn
Administrator

Posts: 23295

Posted on: 01/28/2013 09:39 PM
With the older games you'd be right. However it was explained many times before already, all current Core i7 Generation use the Nehalem base architecture, if you clock them all them all the same they will perform roughly the same. The biggest perf differences with Sandy and Ivy bridge have been thanks to the binned Turbo modes.

Now we use overclocked Core i7 965 Extreme CPUs, I've demonstrated in the past already that they perform roughly similar to Core i7 2600 and Core i7 3770. Now agreed a 3770K overclocked at 4600+ MHz could make a bit of a difference in FPS up-to 1920x1200, but nothing massive or extremely significant.

Next to that you will have noticed that we updated our test suite with new and thus GPU stringent games. All facts combined, CPU changes just wouldn't make a lot of difference unless you stay at lower resolutions or are very 3DMark savvy, which calculates a CPU score and uses that CPU score into the overall P score.

Taint3dBulge
Maha Guru

Posts: 1093

Posted on: 01/28/2013 09:49 PM
With the older games you'd be right. However it was explained many times before already, all current Core i7 Generation use the Nehalem base architecture, if you clock them all them all the same they will perform roughly the same. The biggest perf differences with Sandy and Ivy bridge have been thanks to the binned Turbo modes.

Now we use overclocked Core i7 965 Extreme CPUs, I've demonstrated in the past already that they perform roughly similar to Core i7 2600 and Core i7 3770. Now agreed a 3770K overclocked at 4600+ MHz could make a bit of a difference in FPS up-to 1920x1200, but nothing massive or extremely significant.

Next to that you will have noticed that we updated our test suite with new and thus GPU stringent games. All facts combined, CPU changes just wouldn't make a lot of difference unless you stay at lower resolutions or are very 3DMark savvy, which calculates a CPU score and uses that CPU score into the overall P score.

Ah yes, i remember when you did that article.. Just thought Id mention it though.. So will Haswell have any benefits to cpu bottelnecking like that?

Denial
Ancient Guru

Posts: 8163

Posted on: 01/28/2013 10:02 PM

Ah yes, i remember when you did that article.. Just thought Id mention it though.. So will Haswell have any benefits to cpu bottelnecking like that?

Haswell is once again focusing mainly on integrated GPU performance and power savings through some of the voltage regulators being integrated onto the CPU. You'll probably see some general performance gains but limited to the 10-15% we've been seeing from Nehalem on. And those gains generally don't translate over to the same percentages when running at extremely high resolutions, like Hilbert stated.

I also kinda think that with the eventual move towards 4K displays on the PC it's going to set things back more onto the GPU. Right now even clocking my 3770K at 4.5 barely shows gains in anything on my 690 @ 1920x1200. Put the 690 at 4K and even those gains evaporate, with the exception of maybe some very intense CPU areas or titles.

swISS
Master Guru

Posts: 372

Posted on: 01/28/2013 10:07 PM
That is pretty ****ing awesome. I cant wait to see the MARS version..

zer0_c0ol
Maha Guru

Posts: 2407

Posted on: 01/28/2013 10:28 PM
hardware of the year...purely for the build

damn asus the things u make

PhazeDelta1

Posts: 14784

Posted on: 01/28/2013 10:31 PM
Awesome review.

hallryu

Posts: 11454

Posted on: 01/28/2013 10:34 PM
The looks just don't do it for me but it is a beast, pure and simple.

StewieTech
Chuck Norris

Posts: 1546

Posted on: 01/28/2013 10:38 PM
I want three! Oh...

What a monster.

Fox2232
Ancient Guru

Posts: 2993

Posted on: 01/28/2013 11:05 PM
Two of them are just starting to show Teeth at 3x 1080p displays.
I would like to see results and comparison for 3x 1600p displays or 6x 1080p which would be 12.288M and 12.4416M pixels.

And I would like to see AvP 2010 Benchmark, since that game do not get CPU bottlenecked even on lowly i3's.

P.S: Hilbert, you have done it again! For once again, you have provided me with about +/-20min of unadulterated reading pleasure.. If I could I would shake your hand and give you a big hug. You deserve some love for this!

We appreciate your hard work. Thank you!

Uncle Dude
Maha Guru

Posts: 2301

Posted on: 01/29/2013 01:31 AMThere is very limited availability and these are custom made, only a thousand pieces!

The very next sentence was omitted in an effort to quell the jealous rage of a thousand gurus:

And this is why I have to make do with only two.

Good stuff, Hilbert.

NAMEk
Master Guru

Posts: 514

Posted on: 01/29/2013 01:59 AM
Awesome review.

Illnino
Master Guru

Posts: 566

Posted on: 01/29/2013 02:20 AM
Not bad at all, temps are crazy for a single 120mm rad quite decent, not sure id fork out for it though this close to a refresh of GCN. Although for just having 1/1000 id have one.